Chapter 8: Balamb Garden
Cloud and Vincent had been walking for about two hours, encountering no monsters, when they came to the crest of a hill, and had their first sight of Balamb Garden. Cloud's jaw dropped, he had never seen a building so…beautiful, not including those in the City of the Ancients of course, but this was something else, this was man's beauty, not the Ancient's. It was smooth and streamlined, with a glowing blue ring surrounding it, it was open topped, so sunlight could get into it easily, bright lights seemed to shine out of it, it glistened with power and new life, and made Cloud uneasy about whether his mission would succeed or not.
Vincent and Cloud stopped for a break before carrying on, mainly to look at Garden rather than because they actually needed one, when Vincent spoke, "Do you think I should do something about this?" waving his claw encased arm at Cloud.
"Yeah, we don't want any uncomfortable questions asked, I'll see if we have any bandages or something, and you can pretend that its broken."
"Okay, but we had better come up with a good way to keep it hidden, because people wont believe that its broken forever."
Cloud started to rummage through his pack for the first aid kit. Luckily there were plenty of bandages in it, Tifa sure had been prepared when she had put it together, Vincent's arm was quickly wrapped up, and was put into a sling in case anyone wondered how bulky it was compared to the other. Cloud admired his handy work, its was good enough, for now, if they got into Garden and were there for a while they would just have to think of a better way to keep it covered, or else think of a good excuse, like that Vincent was a robot or something. Cloud chuckled to himself causing Vincent to raise and eyebrow at him.
"Oh, Cloud before I forget, here you go." Vincent handed Cloud something in a hard, small, flat case
"What's this?"
"Open it."
Inside was a pair of high quality sunglasses, dark enough so that not even his glowing blue eyes would be seen through it. "What's this?" he asked again.
"When I was in the Turks, we were all issued a pair of sun glasses, it's a psychological thing, it makes people uneasy because you can not see their eyes. That's why Rude always wears his."
"So, why've you given them to me? I'm not a Turk."
"Because I think that it would be best if people don't see your eye's glowing like that, it would raise as many questions as this gold arm of mine."
Cloud scowled, he liked his eyes, and was as proud of them as people who had horrendous battle scars were, because in his own way, his eyes were. But he saw the logic in what the ex-Turk said, and put them on. The less people noticed them, the less suspicious they would be of them too.
"We better get going then." Cloud said as he stood up, brushed off his old SOLDIER pants with his hands, and started walking toward Garden.
Cloud and Vincent had finally reached the entrance to Balamb Garden, they stopped and looked around. Everyone seemed to be so happy, Cloud would have felt upset about how he had been ordered to bring down it down, but for some reason he was exited about joining the place, and he knew he had a job to do, he was just following orders which somehow made it seem not so bad. A girl of about 18 walked up to them as they stood looking around at the entrance, trying to figure out what to do "Excuse me but do I know you?" She asked in that strange accent that the people around here had.
Cloud shook his head, "No, I don't think so, we're new here. Could you tell us who to ask about joining?"
The girl squealed and hugged the teens, "I'm so glad you want to join, after the Ultimecia battle, its been really hard to recruit new members into any Garden, especially ours! Galbadia had to shut down and all of the students moved to Trabia Garden because of lack of students! We've always had the most young students here, a lot of the students got promoted to SeeD after the war so we have few people training, and most of them are still young, so its okay here for now, but in a few years when they get too old…. What happened to your arm?"
Cloud and Vincent exchanged looks; they had no idea what she was on about, nor understood most of what she said, she talked really fast.
"It got broken a few days ago." Vincent said sharply as though he didn't want to talk about it.
"Erm…so who do we talk to?" Cloud said, fingering the silence materia on his Escort Guard unconsciously like he did when Yuffie had talked to him.
"Talk to Quistis, I mean Miss Trepe, she's in charge of all student related matters, seeing as Headmaster Cid has left and isn't coming back. I'll show you the way, come on."
The hyper-girl started to skip away, and into the main Garden building. Cloud and Vincent followed, jogging in order to keep up with her. She suddenly stopped in front of an elevator. "Oh, I didn't tell you my name, its Selphie." She looked at them, as though expecting some sort of response and frowned when she received none apart from a short, polite introduction from Cloud.
"Hi Selphie, I'm Cloud, this is Vincent."
"Cloud?" She laughed, "What sort of name is that? Are you a hippie or was your head always in the clouds when you were a kid?"
Cloud scowled at the girl, he didn't like her, no one made fun of his name and got away with it.
"Never mind, come on, if you get into this elevator, go to the second floor, walk to the end of the bridge, go right when you reach the corridor, and go into the first classroom on your left, Miss Trepe should be in there now, just finishing her lesson. Bye now!" She left Cloud and Vincent and went off skipping around the large water feature in the centre of the building.
"Hippie…" Vincent snorted
"Shut up!" Cloud snapped at him, as they got into the elevator.
They reached the classroom, and stood by the door listening, a blonde woman was talking about something called GFs, and how they made you forget some of your earlier memories. Vincent wondered what they were, he hadn't heard of these GF things before, 'Is is some kind of drug?' A bell rang and the women dismissed the class. As the students passed Cloud and Vincent they pointed and sniggered at them, especially Cloud, they had never seen such strange clothes, and hair before. Cloud didn't notice them looking as he walked into the classroom, once the last student had left.
"Excuse me, but are you Miss Trepe?" Cloud asked politely to the women behind a desk at the front of the room.
"Yes I am. What can I do for you?" The tall blonde had a whip by her side, and looked as though she knew how to use it, 'but still, she must be pretty weak if she has to use a whip as a weapon instead of something stronger, maybe she's strong in magic and has a high MP level.' Cloud thought.
"Me and Vincent here want to join Garden." Cloud said bluntly, still angry with the 'hippie' incident.
"You do? That's great! Its about time people stared to want to join again, I thought we'd scared off any potential candets over the last few years." Miss Trepe said, "Have you spoken to anyone about this yet?"
Both teens shock their heads, wondering what had happened to scare off any new students, "No, but a girl called Selphie told us to come and find you, she directed us to come here."
"Good, but may I ask why do you want to join? Especially after what's been happening over the last few years." The woman looked puzzled and curious at the same time.
Vincent answered the question with the first thing that came to mind, while Cloud racked his brains for an answer, "We want to become strong, and make our Mother proud."
Cloud shot a glance at him, 'WHAT!?! Our mother?'
Miss Trepe seemed to accept this lie and smiled kindly at them, "Well you're not too old to start to learn, but I'm surprised that you're brothers, you don't look anything alike."
"We're half brothers, we have different fathers." Cloud quickly said, not trusting what Vincent might say
"Come on, my office is just at the other end of this corridor, if you want to join at this exact moment you have to fill in some forms, and then pass an interview with the Commander. We should be able to tell you by tonight if you've got in or not, that is if we start now."
"Okay, we're not doing anything, we can fill them in now."
"Great, that's the attitude we like here, I'll inform Squall that you both will need to be interviewed by him in about an hour."
An hour later:
Cloud and Vincent were being escorted to the basement, where the Commander's office was. This man, they had learned, had killed some Sorceress from the future, that the girl Cloud had kidnapped had told Sephiroth, she had been very powerful and wanted to do something called time compression, Cloud hadn't really listened, it had sounded boring and complicated, but obviously this Squall-guy was someone to keep and eye on. This Sorecress didn't sound as strong as Sephiroth though. Their packs had been left in Instructor Trepe's office. They stepped out of the elevator and followed the blonde woman down a corridor, it looked a lot newer than the rest of the building, and smelt like it had been painted only a few months ago, to his nose anyway, to others it wouldn't smell at all, he guessed.
"Just here, door number B16. Go in, introduce yourselves, and be honest. Good luck!"
She knocked and opened a door on the right, not waiting for a reply, holding it wide enough for both teens to talk through. She closed it behind them, leaving them alone.
Vincent looked around, the room was plain, a large oak desk sat in the centre of the room, with two chairs facing it, and one behind. There was a large matching cupboard and a bookshelf, on the desk sat piles of books and paper work, along with a computer. Another door was to the left of the room, and there were no windows. He walked over to one of the seats opposite the desk and sat down, this Commander Squall obviously hadn't got there yet.
Cloud took his time, before sitting down, and admired a strange weapon that was displayed on the right wall, it looked like a half sword-half gun, underneath it was a small plaque saying simply 'Gunblade', he guessed that was what it was called. Cloud took it down, "Hey, are so sure you should be doing that?" Vincent asked warily watching him, Cloud looked up at him from the study of the weapon, he pointed it at Vincent.
"Bang!"
Vincent turned away and looked at the door on the other side of the room. Cloud shrugged and put the strange weapon back on the wall, and then took off his sword so that he could sit properly on the other chair in front of the desk, and together they waited for the Commander to come in.
Squall ran down the hallway, he looked at his watch; he was late, really late. He hoped that the two people he was supposed to interview were still there. He had got carried away training with Rinoa and lost track of time. He skidded around a corner, almost falling over and slammed against a wall, knocking the papers out of someone arms as they jumped back to avoid him. He carried on running once balanced, shouting "Sorry!" over his shoulder to the SeeD, he opened a door on his right, it led to Xu's office, ran through to the door on the other side of the room, through to another office that was painted pink and smelt of flowers, through the door there, and into his own.
The door slammed behind him, as he calmly walked to his desk, trying not to breath heavily and rub his shoulder where it hit the wall. "I'm sorry I'm late. So, I hear you two want to join Garden." He stated as he sat down on his favourite chair behind the desk, trying to act professional.
"Yes, Commander we are."
Squall winced, how many times had he told people not to call him that? He looked up to examine the two people he was supposed to be interviewing. One of his left was short; with long black hair and red eyes, he looked about 16, maybe younger, and seemed to have a broken left arm 'I wonder why he hasn't healed it with a Curaga yet'. The other was a bit taller and older, with impossibly spiky blonde hair and dark sunglasses on. Both teens were wearing strange clothes, and whichever had just spoken did so in a strange way, he had an accent that he hadn't heard before, he didn't think he had anyway. The blonde had a huge sword propped up against the chair, Squall was surprised, not many people used broadswords this day and age, no one in Balamb Garden used one, preferring short or long swords, or even a gunblade, which had become increasingly popular with the younger students in the past few years.
"Please, call me Squall, not Commander."
Cloud raised an eyebrow, if the Commander didn't even want to be called by his title, then this place was certainly lax in discipline. When Sephiroth was the one and only General for SOLDIER, he had made sure everyone had called him General or Sir. Cloud composed his face and carried on with the interview. Maybe Squall was younger than he acted, he only looked about 19 on second glance.
"Okay, Squall."
"So, what are your names?"
"I'm Cloud and this is Vincent."
"And your last names?"
"Valentine" Vincent quickly put in, Cloud looked at him, trying not to glare and shout out loud that he would never be called Cloud Valentine, but Squall had nodded accepting the name, it was too late. In his head Cloud groaned.
"So Cloud and Vincent Valentine," Squall hesitated a moment before carrying on "are you family, or…are you married?"
"We're brothers." Vincent quickly said, shocked that the man could think that, while Cloud hid his face in his hands in further embarrassment.
"Okay." Squall sounded relieved and embarrassed about having asked the question, but it had to be asked whenever two people came in with the same last name, especially when they looked so different from each other.
"Have you filled in all of the entry forms with Qusitis Trepe?"
"Yes, Sir. They are all complete."
"Good, do you know anything about garden?"
"Not much" Vincent confessed
"Well, if we decide to let you in someone can fill you in on it all, we don't really have time for that now. Have you had any training in weapons or fighting skills?"
"I can use broadswords, while Vincent prefers to uses guns, especially sniper rifles." Cloud answered, trying to make it seem like they weren't all that good at using the weapons, "We both also have other basic training in weapons like spears, staffs, shurikens and know basic fist fighting and first aid too" He continued thinking back to the long nights when on the meteor quest, when every night a different member of the group would try teach the others some of their skills. He was quite good with the spear, guns and fist fighting, but was hopeless using the staff and shuriken. Vincent couldn't use anything that wasn't gun related, apart from fist fighting, and neither teen could use one of Cait Sith's megaphones or Red XIII's hair clips, and so he didn't bother to mention them. Thinking about it, no one had been able to use the megaphones or hairclips apart from Cait and Red.
Squall was surprised at the range of weapons that they had been trained with, in Garden a person always stuck to the first weapon they got hold of, they rarely changed weapons from cadet to SeeD. 'They must have lived in a city like Galbadia, or maybe one of the smaller villages where they had to protect themselves and the villagers from monsters while growing up, that would explain the range of weapons that they can use and their unusual accents. Unless they're lying to get in, of course, and in a few weeks we find out that they can't use anything that they said they could. Maybe Cloud could learn to use the gunblade if he likes swords and can use guns; once he's had some training I might actually have a decent opponent, he looks like a sword man. Irvine would be happy if I let Vincent in, especially if he can use sniper rifles, especially since he's still the only sniper here.'
Squall continued the interview for another hour. He decided that he liked them, but both were carefully hiding something, he could tell, all in all, however, he thought that they would be a good asset for Garden, once trained, and decided to let them join if their paper work was correct. "Right then, someone will inform you of our decision, to let you join or not, by tonight at 2000 hours. You may stay in Garden until then or leave and come back later." Squall stood up and shook their hands while they thanked him for taking the time to interview them, and left.
Cloud attached Ultima Weapon back onto his back and left the room, not bothering to check that Vincent was following. Squall seemed like a decent bloke, but was obviously no match for him, the teen obviously couldn't even decide if he wanted to use a gun or a sword so instead chose half and half. Cloud frowned as he walked down the corridor with Vincent walking a step behind, 'I can't believe he asked us if we were married!' He glanced over he shoulder at Vincent and shuddered, 'Like I would!'
Vincent followed Cloud out of the room, wondering why Cloud had told Squall about the weapons that they could use, it seemed like a strange thing to do. If Cloud and him had swapped places, he would have said that he had no training in anything but first aid…Cloud must have known that by admitting that Vincent could use a weapon that he would eventually be given one. Vincent carried on walking, lost in thought, tailing Cloud.